ACE SPEEDWAY CREW MEMBER TESTS POSITIVE FOR COVID 19: A crew member for one of the racing teams that participated in last week’s event at Ace Speedway has tested positive for COVID-19, according to Short Track Scene’s Matt Weaver. Weaver, the website’s founder, said CARS Tour series operator Jack McNelly gave competitors the news Saturday afternoon before this week’s series event at Hickory Motor Speedway in Newton. According to Weaver, McNelly said the CARS Tour was notified of the positive coronavirus test in the days after the June 6 event in Alamance County. McNelly did not give the name of the person who tested positive, but Weaver said CARS series officials told him it was one of the racing team’s crew members. On each of the past three Saturdays (May 23rd and 30th and June 6th) Ace Speedway had racing, with the stands nearly full of spectators, few of them wearing masks. A reporter at last week’s event estimated there were at least 2,000 fans in attendance.
https://www.newsobserver.com/sports/article243521227.html

DUKE HISTORIAN SAYS FT. BRAGG NEEDS A NEW NAME: According to the biography, Bragg received an appointment to the academy at age 16 through the political connections of his older brother and graduated fifth in the class of 1837. He served in the Second Seminole War and the Mexican-American War before resigning from the military and moving to Louisiana to buy and run a sugar plantation, which relied on the labor of at least 125 slaves. Bragg rejoined the military to serve in the Civil War, during which the Battlefield Trust says he “won partial victories — at places like Perryville, Stones River, and Chickamauga — but never delivered the finishing blow,” in part because his subordinate officers often hated him and refused to obey his battle orders. “These men were, by definition, traitors who had conducted war against the United States,” said Newcity, deputy director for Slavic, Eurasian and East European Studies at Duke University.
https://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/article243442316.html

RNC VOTES FOR SCALED-DOWN CHARLOTTE CONVENTION, TRUMP RALLY ELSEWHERE: An event that once was projected to attract more than 50,000 people to Charlotte — including delegates, party officials, media and others — has been reduced to a bare minimum by the Republican National Committee’s executive committee. A fraction of the expected delegates will now attend the event, which begins Aug. 24. President Donald Trump’s acceptance speech, the centerpiece event, will be moved to another state after N.C. Gov. Roy Cooper said he could not guarantee that the full attendance of 19,000 people would be allowed at the Spectrum Center due to the coronavirus pandemic. Jacksonville, Fla. is the current front-runner to host the speech, RNC chairman Ronna McDaniel said Wednesday morning.
https://www.newsobserver.com/news/politics-government/article243446616.html

NC FATALITIES ASSOCIATED WITH COVID 19 SURPASS 1,000: At least 36,516 people in North Carolina have tested positive for the coronavirus and 1,041 have died, according to state and county health departments. On Monday, the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services reported an additional 938 cases of the virus, up from 921 reported Sunday. The state was averaging about 1,000 daily cases over the last seven days as of Monday, the highest seven-day rolling average reported so far. State health officials on Monday reported completing about 8,800 new COVID-19 tests for a total of 520,113, about 10% of which have come back positive. At least 739 North Carolinians were hospitalized with COVID-19 on Monday — an all-time daily high since the start of the pandemic. The previous record was 717 hospitalizations reported on Friday.
https://www.newsobserver.com/news/coronavirus/article243380661.html

END NO-KNOCK WARRANTS, BAN POLICE NECK HOLDS NOW: This is no time for government paralysis by analysis. It is time for North Carolina’s mayors and municipal leaders to send a message to their communities by taking immediate action. North Carolina’s municipal leaders need to act now and order their police forces to end the use of no-knock warrants and prohibit all neck holds. They need to show they are in command of their communities and they are in touch with the concerns and legitimate demands of their citizens. They need, as New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo explained on Monday, a reform agenda and to then implement it. “The protestors are making a point. And most of them are making a smart, sensible point. But you have to add the positive reform agenda that every voice calls for so the government, the politicians know what to do. And there is a positive reform agenda here. There should be a national ban on excessive force by police officers. There should be a national ban on chokeholds.”
https://www.wral.com/editorial-city-leaders-end-no-knock-warrants-ban-police-neck-holds-now/19127153/